Blues Guitar 101
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The blues is both a style and a chord progression. The blues
chord progression can be played in any style ( funk, country,
etc.) Something can be played in a blues style but not use the
blues progression. Confusing? Well for the moment we are going
learn to play a blues progression in a blues style.
The following 12 bar* chord progression
is one of the most commonly used variations of the blues, so I
will use it as a starting point. Later I will show you some other
common variations. This example is in the key of A and consists
of three chords ( A, D, and E ). You could also replace them with
7th chords ( A7, D7, and E7 ). Start by strumming the basic major
or 7th chords to get the feel of the progression. You can use
a strum pattern that you are familiar with, or just strum once
on every beat. The 12 measures can be repeated any number of times
until the end of the song, at which time you will end by strumming
the final A chord once. There are a lot of endings that could
be played, but we will keep it simple to start with. If there
is a measure without a chord written above, this means to keep
playing the chord from the previous measure.
* bar is a slang term for measure
Use the following two MIDI files as a background to play along
with.
straight feel
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shuffle feel
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Blues guitar 101, page 2 
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